


Ladykiller

by Isis



Category: Canadian Actor RPF (C6D)
Genre: F/M, Gun Kink, M/M, Mindfuck, Serial Killers, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-05
Updated: 2006-04-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 01:00:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2713153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Callum's not really a serial killer - he just plays one in the movies. Or so Hugh has always thought.  Until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ladykiller

**Author's Note:**

> [Cover art by Ref](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/isiscolo/845847/76515/76515_original.jpg)
> 
> Contains spoilers for _Hard Core Logo_.

The problem with hanging out with Callum, thinks Hugh, is that women are always coming on to him, because he's one of Canada's Sexiest Stars or some such bullshit, not that he disagrees. It's not like he wouldn't share; they've done that a few times, and it was okay, but if he's got Callum in the room he'd just as soon be fucking him than some suicide blonde with goth makeup. Plus, it's always, like, "oh, Hugh Dillon? You an actor, too?" which pisses him off. Even though he is.

So they're at this dive in Edmonton, and sure enough, up comes the chick. She's got fake-black instead of fake-blonde hair this time, but she bats her eyelashes at Callum and ignores Hugh entirely. "I saw you in Suspicious River," she gushes. "I thought you were great!"

"Yeah, well, thanks," says Callum, shrugging a little. Hugh knows he hates this sort of thing.

"And Shooting Gallery! And Men With Guns! I'm such a big fan of yours, Callum. May I call you Callum?"

"Yeah, okay." He shifts a little in his seat and gives Hugh a desperate glance over the chick's shoulder, but Hugh just grins back.

"I've heard wonderful things about your upcoming movie, too. Unnatural and Accidental, huh. I can't wait to see it!" Then she cocks her head and purses her lips a little. "But really, don't you think it's time to move on to a different sort of role? I mean, don't you get tired of being bad guys and serial killers?"

"He's not really a fucking serial killer," interjects Hugh. "He just plays one in the movies."

They all laugh, but it sounds pretty fucking fake, even to an actor's ears. Callum signs a bar napkin for the chick, and she bats her eyelashes at him and says, "I've got to go home now, but it was fantastic to meet you! You're even cuter in person than you are on screen!" 

Hugh makes a gagging face where she can't see, and Callum gives him a weird look and then turns to the girl. "Well, if you're heading out, I'll walk you to your car."

She gives him this five-hundred-watt smile and takes his arm, and anyone who doesn't know Callum as well as Hugh does would never see the flinch, but he walks her to the door and they go outside. 

Hugh smokes while he waits, almost a whole fucking cigarette, until finally, fucking finally, the door opens and Callum comes back in, and catches his eye and smiles as he heads back across the room.

Hugh wouldn't swear to it - he's been a musician for so long that his hearing's not so good any more - but he's pretty sure that just before the door opened, he heard a gunshot.

But there is no fucking way he'll say that to Callum.

* * *

Callum is tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the shit playing on the radio as he drives them back to the motel; he's jittering in his seat, he's twitching with impatience. If Hugh didn't know better he'd think amphetamines or maybe coke, but Callum's clean of everything but nicotine. But he's high. He's high.

And he's been like that ever since he came back into the bar, grabbed Hugh and said, "Come on, let's go." Of course Hugh slid off his barstool, cool and easy, and, punching him in the shoulder, pushed past him to the door. He took a furtive look left and right as they walked out: No girl. No body. A dark stain on the asphalt of the parking lot could have been blood; then again, it could have been vomit. It probably was.

He looks at Callum's profile. They've known each other for more than ten years now, and he has no fucking idea what just happened. He tries to think of the other times that they've gotten together - when he'd dropped by to see Callum on set somewhere, Ashcroft or Shelburne or New Buttfuck, Alberta, or when, like this weekend, he'd been playing somewhere and Callum came out for a few days - and tries to remember if there have been any other girls, any other gunshots.

Callum must have seen him looking, because he turns full toward him and grins. "Sorry to drag you away so early," he says, not sounding sorry at all.

"Fuck off. And keep your eyes on the fucking road."

"I can drive this with my eyes closed," says Callum, and for a moment Hugh is worried he might prove it. Which would have been funny as fuck if they were both wasted, but sober it sounds like the stupid idea it is, and the fucking show is tomorrow night, and it would not be a good idea to show up dead. "I just had to get out of there. You know. I get weird when that kind of shit happens."

Hugh wonders if "that kind of shit" means groupie girls hanging all over him, or if it means the kind of shit that involves gunshots and dead bodies, but he doesn't say anything, just gives a noncommittal grunt, because Callum's twitchy enough as it is. When they pull up to the motel, Callum jumps out of the car practically before they stop, yanking off his driving glasses and shoving them into his pocket. He's muttering, "Come on, come on," and when Hugh slides out, Callum grabs him by the hand and pulls him over to the wall and kisses him hard up against it.

At least he's chosen a dark edge of the parking lot, where the lamps have burnt out or maybe been taken out by rocks, thinks Hugh, because Callum's on him like a fucking lamprey, like a hurricane, his legs wrapping him like vines and his hands pushing him into the wall, and when Callum's tongue dives into his mouth Hugh gasps and just hangs on. Callum tastes and smells like the bar, like smoke and spilled whiskey and cheap perfume, with something underneath that Hugh tells himself can't possibly be gunpowder.

Callum moves his mouth down to suck hotly at Hugh's neck, and Hugh stretches a little and gives an uncomfortable laugh. "Christ, Callum, what got into you tonight?"

"What's gonna get into me tonight, you mean," says Callum, shooting him a searing glance from under half-lidded eyes. He grinds a little into Hugh's body, and, _fuck_ yeah, Hugh has to groan and thrust back, because, yeah.

"So what're we doing fucking around out here, then?" mutters Hugh, and Callum laughs and pulls him away from the wall and toward the door of their room. Callum's stuff is still in his suitcase, up against one of the hideous armchairs where he'd set it when he arrived earlier that evening; Hugh's stuff is scattered all over the place, and they stumble over boots and empty soda bottles as Callum steers them both to the bed.

There's this electric glint in Callum's eyes, and it's coming _this_ close to freaking Hugh out. Because he's used to being the craziest fucker in the room: that's how he got Bruce McDonald to give him Joe Dick, and that's probably why Bruce thought of him for the role in the first place. There's a little of Joe Dick in him - hell, there's a lot of Joe Dick in him, and he might have ended up the same way, a strung-out asshole putting a bullet through his brain, if it hadn't been for Callum, steady and smooth, coaching him on character development and the fucking virtues of sobriety.

But right now the craziest fucker in the room is pushing him onto the bed, yanking at his clothes, laughing like a loon. Hugh outweighs Callum by more than a little, but he's helpless in the face of this onslaught. He finally pushes him away when Callum starts in on his jeans.

"Boots first, asshole."

Callum shrugs. "You take them off, then." He rolls off, kicks off his own shoes, and begins to strip, quickly and efficiently: pinstripe jacket, black t-shirt, soft faded jeans all fly across the room, landing in the ugly chair. He's bare-ass naked before Hugh's done more than take off his motorcycle boots. "Come on, get it off."

Hugh snickers. "Get you off, you mean."

"That, too," says Callum, smiling brilliantly, which makes him look even more dangerous and wild. He launches himself at Hugh again, tearing at his clothes, and Hugh hears a button come off and go skittering across the nightstand before falling to the rug on the other side.

"You mind, fucker? Don't rip the - ow, fuck, what the fuck are -"

"Shut up," says Callum, pulling Hugh's jeans off with no gentleness at all, "shut up and do me, come on."

"Yeah, yeah, okay." He grabs the stuff from where it landed when he emptied his bags when he got there. No sooner does he have a condom in his hand than Callum's grabbing it, ripping the packet open, smoothing it down over his dick. He knocks Callum's hands out of the way, because fuck, this is something that you want to get adjusted just right, you know? But then Callum opens the slick and squirts it on and he's sliding on top of him before Hugh can say anything at all.

Christ, what the fuck has he gotten himself into? Because yeah, his dick thinks this is a great idea, but there's this tickle in the back of his brain that says something isn't right with Callum. He's high on something, and Hugh has a terrible suspicion, prickling down his spine like an icicle, that Callum has traded alcohol and drugs for the business end of a gun. For that seductive power, that feeling of owning the world, I say who lives or dies and you, you die, motherfucker, you die.

He knows how seductive that is from when he shot himself - okay, he didn't really shoot himself, it was acting, only acting, but Callum had taught him that to act you had to feel, and he'd felt it in his bones. It was something he'd been edging up to for a long time, after all. Self-destruction's a most attainable game, he had sung, and he'd written that one from his heart. 

Maybe that was why he'd seen the way the movie had to end; it had struck him as perfectly right when the idea had wormed its way into his brain, so he pitched it to the screenwriter with the conviction of truth, and when he held the prop gun and wove around declaiming to the camera he was fucking high, he knew it, it was right, it was exactly right. Ten years ago, and he still remembers the terror and exultation he had felt. And how much more of a buzz would it be to turn that gun around, to hold the muzzle to someone else's head? 

What he's feeling now is not even near that sense of power, even though he's fucking Callum - no, he's being fucked by Callum, no matter that his dick is slowly being engulfed by Callum's ass. Callum's on top, metaphorically as well as literally, and all Hugh can do is hang on, fingers digging into slender hips, thrusting upward into the heat that's sliding toward him.

"Yeah, that's good," gasps Callum. He closes his eyes.

With the crazy shut away behind his eyelids, Callum looks okay, he looks normal, and Hugh feels a little better. Fuck, he feels great, and he pulls down on Callum's hips, rolls a little into him, feels the muscles deliberately clenching around his dick. "Fuck, yeah," he breathes, and maybe that was a mistake, because Callum opens his eyes again, and he's looking into the abyss.

"Fuck, yeah," Callum repeats, and there's this tinge of irony in his voice that makes Hugh shiver just a bit. He moves a hand to his own dick, glides it up and down. "Do I have to do _everything_ myself?"

Obediently Hugh moves one hand to where Callum wants it, squeezing and pulling, and thank Christ, Callum closes his eyes again, and he can thrust and think about nothing other than how good it feels. And it does feel good, it feels magnificent, as he buries himself again and again in that sweet, sweet ass, as he feels Callum's dick in his hand jerk and pulse and cover his hand and chest with come. When Callum sighs a little, shifts and slumps, Hugh is too close to his own orgasm to care; growling, he grabs both of Callum's hips again, and slams him down again and again until he's grunting and coming and gasping for breath.

He lets go and Callum collapses on him, they collapse together in a sweaty messy heap, their breaths playing counterpoint to each other, slowing in tandem. It's too much work to lift his head from the pillow. "I'm getting too old for this," he groans. "You're killing me."

"I'd never kill you," says Callum.

Hugh turns his head sharply, but Callum's eyes are guileless. The wild spark is gone. It's just him in there, just Callum. It's okay. It's going to be okay, Hugh thinks. I was just imagining things, maybe.

"Not on purpose, anyway," Callum says. And he grins.

* * *

In the morning, things are normal, or as normal as they ever are when he's on the road, and they've got a gig in the evening, and Callum's there - which isn't normal by anybody's standards. Touring is weird enough as it is, living out of a bus and motel rooms. And then there's being with Callum, which is like living in compressed time; they've got to say everything and do everything all at once, because they only actually get to see each other for a few days every other month or so, and everything has to get crammed into that short span.

Things are normal until Callum buys a newspaper at the counter as they head into the diner for breakfast, and Hugh feels blackness creeping into his gut again. But he only says, "Fuck, Callum, when'd you get so fucking interested in the news?"

"Got to check my investments," Callum says as he slides his long legs into a booth. Hugh snorts, and Callum grins. "Nah, just wondering if you got any preview coverage."

But if the band's in the paper they'll be in the Culture section, and Callum's looking at the front page. When he puts it down and starts paging through City Plus, Hugh surreptitiously scans it to see if any of the upside-down headlines say _murder_ or _shooting_ or _dead_. Or, fuck: _Actor wanted for questioning about bar incident_ , because someone must have noticed Callum giving the chick his autograph, or seen him walking her outside - he was the last person to see her alive, and he was fucking famous, hell, he grew up here, and somebody would have recognized him, somebody not as bold or unlucky as that girl. They would have told the cops, and they would have called Liz, and she would have called and left a message and as soon as Callum turned his phone on -

Fucking stupid, Hugh tells himself, and when the waitress comes by and pours coffee he drinks half his cup quickly, before she has a chance to go to the next table, then holds it out for more. 

As they eat breakfast he leafs through the rest of the paper. There's nothing in it about a mysterious shooting outside a bar, which lets him relax a little. But there's also nothing in it about the band, which pisses him off. It's a familiar sort of pissed-off-ness, though, and he bitches at Callum and Callum bitches right back. Normal.

When Callum puts his fork down and turns on his cell phone, he's got messages; okay, that's normal. As he listens to them, he looks across the table at Hugh and mouths, "Liz," and that's not a surprise either, but Hugh feels himself tense a little, and when Callum's face darkens and he punches his speed-dial and stands up, whammo, there goes any calm Hugh thought he had. He hears Callum say, "Come on, Liz, can't you tell them that…" but whatever he says next is lost as Callum looks apologetically over his shoulder at him, heads for the door and walks out into the parking lot.

Hugh can see him out there, through the window. He's pacing as he talks, rapid, nervous steps, and Hugh doesn't have to hear what he's saying to know that he's upset. Shit. The cops must have kept it out of the paper on purpose, he realizes. Probably want to wait until they can arrest him, the fuckers. 

Outside, Callum snaps his phone shut with an angry motion and strides back toward the diner. Hugh drops money on the table and meets him at the door. "So what did Liz have to say?" he asks, as casually as he can.

Callum scowls as they get in the car. "I've got to go," he says, and Hugh almost tells him not to worry, that he'll come with him to the police station. But then Callum adds: "Battlestar moved up the shooting schedule, and they want me there early tomorrow. Liz already re-booked my flight for this afternoon. Sorry."

"Fucking hell," says Hugh, with feeling. Callum's going to miss the show. He knows he should be relieved that it's only the studio that wants him, not the cops, but it's still a shitty break; they don't see each other often enough, and it pisses him off that this is going to cut into their time together.

Callum comes with him to set up and rehearsal, though, and just having him there is soothing in a weird sort of way. He sits in a chair and leans back, smoking and watching and listening, and he goofs around with the guys when they take a break. Hugh is feeling pretty good when they head back to the motel room to pack up Callum's stuff.

He hadn't brought much, and he hadn't really unpacked his suitcase, so it doesn't take long. While Callum starts getting his things together, Hugh goes into the bathroom to take a piss. When he comes out he's carrying Callum's toothbrush and razor, and he starts across the room to hand them to him, but then stops, stock-still, when he sees what Callum is doing. What he has in his hand.

"What the fuck?" he finally gets out, and Callum looks over at him calmly.

"I've got to take the bullets out," he says. "Transport Canada regulation."

It's like the bottom drops out of Hugh's stomach; he can't take this fucking mental whiplash. But this is hard evidence right here, Callum with the fucking gun in his hand. Swallowing hard, he shakes his head and forces himself to smile and meet Callum's eyes. "You have a _gun_?" He drawls it out deliberately. "What the fuck do you think you are, an _American_?"

Callum laughs, which is gratifying, but it doesn't calm the jitters Hugh's feeling. "Remember that stalker I had?" Hugh nods, though it was years ago, in the burst of fame following Callum's stint on Due South, and he's forgotten most of the details. Some crazy fucker from California was writing letters to Callum, accusing him of stealing his wife because she left him and moved to Canada, and she'd been a big fan of the show. He vaguely remembers a freaked-out Callum calling him up, telling him that the border police had just notified him that they'd detained this guy who had six promo photographs of him and a loaded shotgun. "After that I figured I ought to protect myself. You never know when someone will turn out to be completely fucking nuts, you know?"

I know, thinks Hugh. But what he says is: "Yeah, you never know when some chick says she wants your fucking autograph, turns out she wants to put a knife through your fucking heart."

"Exactly," says Callum, carefully packing the gun in his suitcase.

* * *

It's a good show - the band is hot and the place is packed - and afterward they all hang out and party. There is no shortage of groupie girls, and Hugh picks one more or less at random and takes her back to the motel.

Her name is Lissa, and she's short and kind of skinny, with pointy little breasts and frizzy blond hair and a tattoo of a Disney cartoon princess on her back, just between her shoulder blades. She giggles a lot as she squirms underneath him, a breathy little giggle that amuses him at first, then annoys him.

She's small. Fragile, he thinks. He could move his hands from where they rest next to her shoulders and put them around her pretty white neck. And then he could squeeze. Rolling his weight onto his left arm, he lifts his right hand and trails his fingers across her throat, above the little hollow that pulses as she breathes. He imagines her gasping, fighting for breath as he inexorably tightens his grasp and chokes the life from her.

"Oh…oh…" she moans breathily, fluttering her mascara'ed lashes at him. "Come on, baby, oh, don't you want to? Don't you?" She rolls her hips a little, thrusting up at him, and he groans. Yeah, he fucking wants to, all right, but what he wants to do is probably not what she wants him to do.

He slides off her a little and bends to suck at her breasts. Regretfully, almost, he lets his fingers slip from her throat, tracing a line down her torso. At her heart he thinks, I could take a knife, stab her right here. She'd bleed right into my fucking mouth. She giggles a little as his fingers circle the breast he's not licking at, then he moves lower, lower, lower. He rubs at her cunt, and she moans again. 

She's asking for it, so he obliges, rolls a rubber on and stabs her, right where she wants it. Yeah, it feels good, of course it feels good, and thank Christ she's stopped giggling, because it was kind of distracting him. But now she's making moans, loud sex noises and come-on talk that sounds just artificial enough to make him suspect that she's trying to get him off in a hurry. Which is okay, he guesses - he appreciates the effort - but her voice is high and grating, and he wishes she would just shut up. He focuses on her neck again, where it arches back, and imagines wrapping a guitar string around it, tightening it against her skin, and he can feel that thought in his balls, all shivery and electric. His gaze slides up to her ear, to where her sweat-damp hair edges her cheek, and he thinks about Callum's gun - Callum's gun, he could hold it to her temple right there, fuck, _Callum_ could be there, holding it, and he'd be smiling, and he'd pull the trigger, and oh, fuck, yeah, thinks Hugh, and as he comes he sees the red of her blood, spattered across the pillow, against the inside of his tightly-closed eyelids.

"Yeah, that was good," Lissa murmurs encouragingly as he flops down on the mattress beside her, drained, and wonders what the fuck is happening to him.

* * *

He calls Callum the next day but his phone's off, and he doesn't leave a message. He leaves a message the next time he calls, from Calgary, and Callum calls him back just after the show in Lethbridge.

It should be easy to talk to Callum; hell, they've talked on the phone practically every week for the past ten years, they shouldn't even need the phone at all. It should be just telepathy, and sometimes it seems like it is. But tonight it's like there's a fucking brick wall between them.

"Shooting's going well," says Callum, and Hugh thinks wildly of the gun for a moment before realizing he's talking about the fucking television show. "If they get another season I think they'll sign me for three or four episodes."

"Great," says Hugh. 

"How's the tour going?"

"Fucking awesome," he says, but it's pretty much an automatic response. He's really only half-listening. Most of his brain is trying to tease apart Callum's words, looking for hidden messages in what he's saying; the rest is trying to figure out how to transmit his own hidden message, about guns and girls and blood on pillowcases, but he's not sure what he wants to say, let alone how to say it.

During the rest of the tour he stays away from the girls. He drinks more than he should, in the after-show parties with the band; he probably shouldn't be drinking at all, take a leaf from Callum's book, but he's got to do something self-destructive, and at this point, drinking seems like his safest choice. When he gets back to L.A. it's with a sense of relief at having made it out of a terrifying wilderness and back to the familiar, the known, the safe. 

At home, he hugs Midori as though she's the only thing that can keep him anchored and sane, and maybe she is. He has absolutely no desire to hold a gun to her head, and when he looks at her all those crazy feelings ebb out of him, slide to the floor and slither into the walls. When they lie in bed and watch the news on television and a segment about a serial killer comes up, some wacko with a gun and a thing for Marilyn Monroe blondes, he changes the channel.

* * *

It's a couple months later when he gets the call about a guest spot on Stargate: Atlantis. He doesn't watch the show, but of course he's heard the buzz. The Stargate franchise is the most popular thing coming out of the Vancouver studios these days, and it sounds like it will be a lot of fun; he gets to be a hot-headed guy on some planet where the principals of the show go for a trading visit and promptly get into the middle of the local civil war. His character is the rebel leader, which amuses him.

He calls Callum even before the contract's gone through. They've settled back into their old mode, talking every so often, and if there are things they don't talk about, Hugh doesn't really notice it. "Yeah, so," he says, "I'll be up there the week of the 27 th. Four days."

There's a pause; Callum's probably checking his calendar. "Okay, I'll be around. You want to stay here?"

"Fuck, you're not making me go to fucking Motel 6," says Hugh, and they both laugh.

The first night he's in Vancouver they spend the evening catching up with each other, and after that Hugh's pretty busy over at the Stargate set every day, from early until late. Callum's got his own things cooking: two days of filming something, and then he's got a script to study for a movie he'll be doing in Toronto in another month. In the evenings they have dinner together, and afterward they fuck lazily, like the forty-something men that they are.

Everything goes well until the third day. It's the last day Hugh's scheduled on set, although he's staying an extra day in case something gets screwed up and they need to redo a scene. They're actually filming what will be his first scene: one of the men in his rebel army makes a move on the character played by Rachel Luttrell - who is a total knock-out, Hugh has to admit - and she does a little babe-fu on the guy, throws him to the ground, and that's when Hugh enters the scene with a space weapon that looks like a cross between a Glock and a Star Trek phaser.

They're rehearsing the moves, which is mostly Rachel and the other guy, but Hugh has to come in smoothly at the end. Which he doesn't, because the first time he rolls into the scene and slides the prop weapon up against Rachel's head, his heart starts thumping, his dick gets hard in his pants, and he has a feeling that his face is not the "calmly menacing mask" the script calls for.

"Come on, Dillon," says Martin, the director. "You're the one in control here. Even though Teyla probably _can_ kick your butt."

They all laugh, Hugh included, and they do it again, and again, and eventually Martin decides they can film it, and the first take is good. But the rest of the day is pure torture, because they're doing all the weapons scenes, all the fighting, and even though Hugh knows the thing in his hand is just a clever plastic toy he still feels his heart speed up every time he points it at someone. It's almost a disappointment when he gets to "shoot," because it's only a matter of faking the recoil, since the sound and light effects will be added later.

Fucking stupid, he thinks. It's not like he hasn't used far more realistic props than this space-gun thing. But he holds it in his hand and he thinks about the rush Callum must be getting when he does it. He wonders how many Callum's done, how many girls - maybe they weren't all girls, maybe there were a few guys in there too, pretty boys in eyeliner who just wanted to suck Callum's cock. Which he can't blame them for. But then they end up sucking the barrel of his gun, thinks Hugh, and that thought makes his dick jump up and take notice. He fights it down, turning the prop over in his hands as he waits for the go on the next scene, because this rebel chief is supposed to be in control, not fucking crazy.

But when he gets back to Callum's place he allows himself to think about it again. Callum holding a gun on someone while he watches, that's a fucking turn-on, and it worries him a little that he thinks that. Then there's the image of Callum holding the gun on _him_ , and he does not want to think about how fucking arousing that is, or what it says about him that he can imagine the metallic taste of the gun barrel in his mouth. 

"I'm done, thank Christ. No waking up at oh-dark-thirty in the fucking morning tomorrow," he says to Callum. "Let's go out."

"All right," says Callum agreeably, and grabs his jacket. Then he goes to a drawer, pulls something out, sticks it inside, and Hugh's sure of what it must be.

"You, uh. You take your gun with you?" He licks his lips, he can't help it, and Callum gives him an amused glance.

"Yeah, always," he says, and shows Hugh where he keeps it, in the special inside pocket that's kind of like a sewn-in holster. "Got to watch those crazies."

"Fuck, yeah," says Hugh.

* * *

They get dinner at a vegetarian Indian restaurant - Callum's on a health-food kick, which strikes Hugh as ironic considering he still hasn't quit smoking - then head to a club, a place on the seamy side of town that he suspects Callum hasn't been to since the last time Hugh was there with him. It's kind of dark, which is fine, and smoky, which is also fine, and what passes for "live music" turns out to be two women with guitars who deserve more attention than the small weekday crowd is giving them.

Hugh's watching a boy at the bar who's probably barely old enough to be in the place, or he's using a fake ID, maybe. He's tall and skinny and wearing eyeliner, black against his pale skin, and his camo-print painter's pants drape so low on his hips that there's at least two inches of underwear showing.

Callum follows his glance. "They get younger every year, don't they."

"Fuck," says Hugh with feeling. "And we get older, eh?"

"I refuse to age gracefully," says Callum. His smile makes Hugh shiver down to his toes; it's the smile that makes the camera love him, that makes Hugh want to back him up against the wall and fuck him. The smile that says that he's a little bit wicked and a little bit crazy.

During the break Hugh can't resist going over to chat with the musicians. As much as he's been doing the acting thing lately he still considers himself first and foremost a musician, always. The one with the blonde dreadlocks is Marta, and the other one is Kristen, and they invite him to sing something with them in the next set but he shakes his head. Yeah, he'd love it, but he has a feeling Callum wouldn't appreciate his drawing attention to their presence. Not while he's sitting in a bar with a gun in his jacket and that wicked smile on his lips. That thought makes him look up, and back over toward their table, and shit, there's a girl sitting on his fucking chair, so he says goodbye to the musicians and makes his way back to Callum.

"I'm just so fucking replaceable," he says, hooking a chair from another table with his wrist and dragging it over. He sits on Callum's other side, across from the girl, who is not really that attractive, he decides. She's got a labret and an eyebrow piercing but they look like her last-ditch effort to make herself look cool. Her nose is a little too large for her face, her chin practically nonexistent; her hair is thin and red and very straight, and he can see her white scalp through it.

"I'm Elise. Nina picked up some skanky guy," she informs him. Her eyes are a bit unfocused and he wonders if it's just alcohol - she's clutching her glass as if she's afraid to let go - or if she's been doing something harder. "Left me here by myself, so I came over to say hi, 'cause Billy's so cute." She frowns for a moment at Callum. "Billy, right?"

Callum's face is perfectly solemn as he nods. "Yeah. And this is my friend Joe."

Hugh rolls his eyes at Callum, then pastes a smile on his face. "Yeah, hi." The chick doesn't seem to recognize Callum at all, which is weird as fuck since this is his home base. Maybe it's because she's drunk, or strung out on whatever it is. Maybe it's just that he's not looking so recognizable with his glasses on and his hair clipped on the short side for his most recent role.

The lights go up on the tiny stage area and Marta and Kristen pick up their guitars for the second set. Hugh closes his eyes and listens, and only opens them again when Callum taps his shoulder. "Back in a moment."

Callum's got his jacket on and he and the girl are both standing, and oh motherfucking hell, this is it, thinks Hugh, he's going to do it now. His heart starts hammering double-time. "I'll come with you," he says, but Callum shakes his head. "I'm just walking her out, okay?"

"Don't fuck with me," says Hugh. He looks up at Callum, willing him to understand. "I know," he says as meaningfully as he is able, but Callum's expression doesn't change. When he starts to stand up, Callum puts a hand on his shoulder. 

"Nah, you don't want to come. Just us, right?" he says to the chick, and she giggles. She drinks the last of whatever's in her glass and sets it unsteadily on the table. "Back in a moment," he repeats, and turns toward the door.

Fucking hell. Of course he'd pick now, while the band is playing and nobody's paying attention, and it's too dark in the club for anyone to see him, and he doesn't look like Mr. Sexy Movie Star tonight anyway. Hugh hesitates a moment, then jumps up and bolts after them.

The parking lot is dark. Shadowy figures here and there are doing various unsavory and illegal things - drug deals, fucking, whatever - and for one horrible moment he thinks he's too late, but then he sees a flash of red hair and follows it into the alleyway to the left, past the Dumpster. The girl is up against the wall, her short skirt bunched around her waist, and Callum's leaning into her neck and murmuring something low that Hugh can't hear.

Jealousy bubbles up in Hugh's chest, which is fucking stupid because it's not like they have anything other than an arrangement, they're just friends who like to fuck, right? It's not until he's got one hand on Callum's shoulder and Callum turns, eyes narrowed, that he realizes just what it is that he's jealous of. "Let me," Hugh says, and he knows he's babbling but the words just tumble out, fast and frantic. "You gotta let me, I want to do it."

"Go back in," says Callum, his voice low and tense.

"No, it's okay," slurs the girl. Her eyes are only half-open. "I can do you both."

"I got it," says Hugh. He slides his hand down from Callum's shoulder to his waist, into his open jacket, and his heart is pounding, pounding as he pulls Callum close to him. "You gotta let me," he murmurs, licking at the skin along Callum's cheek, and he can't resist, he's so turned on, he presses his lips to Callum's softly opening mouth, grinds his dick up against his crotch and oh yeah, he's hard too, this is going to be so good.

"Wow," says the girl in a dreamy voice. Hugh turns to see her staring at them; she's got her own hand up her skirt and he can see by the motion of the crumpled fabric that she's rubbing herself lazily. "Wow," she repeats.

He hesitates a moment, because this is shit crazy, this is off the fucking scale of crazy, but he's committed and he knows it. He's been committed ever since Edmonton, since he heard that gunshot and saw the wild look in Callum's eyes, and there is no turning back, no second chance, he's in it until the end. He's breathing hard and Callum is breathing hard, his hands somehow clutching at Hugh's shoulders and pushing him away at the same time, so it's easier than it ought to be to slide the hand on Callum's waist up under his jacket to the hidden pocket and onto the cool metal handgrip of the gun. Callum stiffens when Hugh pulls it out, his mouth opens and he says something but Hugh's not listening, he's fucking committed, he only hears the blood rushing in his veins as he steps away from Callum, steps up to the girl, who looks blankly at him as he thumbs off the safety and pulls the trigger.

Holy motherfucking shit.

The sound of the gunshot seems outrageously loud, like a slap in the face, and it brings him back to his senses. The words Callum is saying resolve themselves: "…the hell are you _taking_ , are you crazy, did you…" and then trail off into nonsense syllables again as Hugh slumps against the wall where the girl had been standing. He's unable to take his eyes from her body, crumpled in the alley; there isn't much blood, she could be just sleeping, and for a wild moment he thinks that maybe he didn't really hit her, maybe there weren't really bullets in the gun. But Callum kneels beside her, brushes her hair lightly away from her temple, and says, "Jesus Christ, Hugh," and Hugh closes his eyes and fights down nausea as he tries to remember how to breathe.

He'd fucked up bigtime, hadn't he. It had all seemed so clear, so obvious, but now he realizes that there was nothing but circumstantial evidence, nothing but air and fairy dust. Of course Callum was shocked, disgusted, furious; Callum hadn't done a thing, it had all been in Hugh's mind. The gunshot he had thought he'd heard outside that Edmonton bar had been a car backfiring, or a firecracker going off. Callum hadn't killed anyone, thinks Hugh.

But now _he_ has.

The gun hangs loosely from his numb fingers. He is in so much shit now. The girl. Callum. Maybe he should pull a Joe Dick and blow his own fucking head off, he thinks, but it seems too much effort to even hold onto the damn handgrip, let alone raise it to his mouth. When a hand gently unwraps his fingers from the gun he gratefully lets go.

"Come on, we've got to get out of here," whispers Callum, low and urgent, his lips brushing Hugh's ear. Hugh opens his eyes. Callum is looking at him with an unreadable expression; he lets his gaze travel past him, to where…

There is nothing behind Callum on the broken asphalt of the alley, no crumpled figure. A dark spot that could be blood or could be…

"What the fuck?" says Hugh slowly.

"Dumpster. Now come on," Callum says again, roughly pushing Hugh out of the alley and in the direction of his car, and thank fuck it's late on a weeknight because nobody's rushing toward them, nobody's even visible because, he realizes, they all have something to hide and nobody wants to be on the spot when the sirens start to wail. He lets Callum load him into the car and he stares out the window as they drive back.

When they arrive at Callum's place he gets out of the car quickly, not wanting to meet his eyes. He trails behind on the way to the door, steps aside as Callum unlocks it, follows him through. Callum drops his jacket on a chair and then he's whirling on Hugh, pinning him to the wall, and Hugh thinks for half a second _oh God oh God he's so fucking pissed off_ before it registers on him that Callum's all over him, hands and mouth and hard cock rubbing impatiently against him, murmuring, "Fuck, that was hot, can't believe it, you, oh, _fuck_ ," unfastening Hugh's clothes, and although the sight of the girl falling to the ground had killed his arousal it comes back full force under this assault. Callum's tongue licks a fevered trail down his skin; by the time it gets to his dick he is aching for it, dying for it, and he fucks Callum's mouth with short, desperate thrusts and comes with a grunt that is almost a sob.

They slide to the floor together, and Callum gives him only two seconds to breathe before he's ripping off his own clothes, muttering, "Help me out, here," and when Hugh meets his eyes he sees that dangerous glint, that sparkle of crazy electricity that frightens and arouses him in equal measure. Hugh reaches for him and Callum throws himself against his body, kissing him hard and dirty, fucking against the skin of his belly like the barrel of a gun rubbing against him. Sliding a hand down, he grasps Callum's dick, fingers on hot flesh better than the thought of gleaming steel, and licks back into the traces of his own come, grabs hard at Callum's ass, matches him crazy for crazy until Callum's face contorts and his dick spurts across them both.

It's easier to lie on the floor in a tangled mess than it is to move, to look this madness in the eye, so Hugh just rests and breathes and waits. Anything else, and he might scream, or throw up, or both. Finally Callum stirs, hauls himself up to a sitting position. "You're a total lunatic, you know that, Dillon?"

"Yeah," says Hugh. But he's not the craziest fucker in the room, no way. Not that he's going to say that to Callum. Ever.

"But next time," says Callum, and Hugh finally turns his head, stares at Callum in sick disbelief. Callum grins. It's the crazy grin again, the one that makes Hugh want to hide under the fucking furniture, and this time he thinks maybe that might not be a bad idea, because the grin's only getting wider.

"Next time," says Callum, "I get to pull the trigger."

**Author's Note:**

> This story had its genesis in a discussion in c_regalis's lj. She'd posted some reviews of CKR's upcoming movie, _Unnatural and Accidental_ , in which he plays a serial killer, and several people had commented that it was a pity all his roles seem to be that of the evil bad guy. I joked, "I'm not a serial killer, but I play one in the movies!" and made a crack about writing RPF in which Callum was a serial killer. True to my word, I wrote a commentfic, which ended up being the first scene of this story when a killer (heh) plotbunny grabbed me by the throat and would not let me go.
> 
>  
> 
> [More extensive notes are here.](http://isiscolo.livejournal.com/289887.html)


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